Saint Catherine Square is located north of Agios Minas, at a lower level than the temple. Saint Catherine’s Square took its name from the church of Saint Catherine, located in this area.
Saint Catherine Square is a pleasant oasis in the heart of the city. Here there are coffee for the grown-ups, while the children have plenty of space to play safely. A characteristic feature of the square is the hundreds of pigeons that many locals come to feed daily.
St. Catherine
The temple of the monastery of Saint Catherine, north-east of Ag. Minas, was formerly a founder of the Monastery of Sinai, who gave it to the Metropolitan Church of St. Minas in 1924.
The monastery of Saint Catherine was founded around the 10th century century, and the building that survives today was the main temple of the monastery. The temple was built in the 16th century century with obvious influences of Venetian architecture.
The monastery of Saint Catherine had several incomes at that time to preserve many monks. The Saint Catherine School of Sinai in the period between 1550-1640 emerges as a university education faculty where ancient Greek writers were taught Philosophy, Theology, Rhetoric and Painting. Graduates of the school excelled.
After 1669 it turned into a mosque known as the Zulfjakar Ali Mosque. As a Muslem mosque it operated until 1922 when the last Muslims left Heraklion with the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey.
Saint Catherine since 1967 holded great exhibitions of Byzantine icons and holy objects (manuscripts, bibles, frescoes, etc.) representing six centuries of Orthodox Church history (14th – 19th centuries).
Among other things, six unique works of the famous hagiographer Michael Damaskinos, an important figure of the Cretan School, are exhibited at the site.
The temple helds annually a church service on Saint Catherine’s feast day. If you want to visit it, the exhibition is open daily 9.30-15.30. There is an entrance ticket.
The Cretan School of Hagiography
After the fall of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, by the Turks in 1453, Constantinopolitan painters migrated to the Venetian-occupied Crete, passing through the sacred art of hagiography.
At the end of the 15th century, the Venetian brought the Renaissance Italian painting style in Crete, which merged with the Byzantine tradition, forming a completely separate style in the 16th and 17th centuries which is called the Cretan School of Hagiography.
Its main features are the perfection of the forms, which are rendered more earthy, and the obsession on detail given with vivid color. From this artistic environment comes the great painter Dominikos Theotokopoulos, known globally as El Greco.
It should be noted that in the 1600s Heraklion had 20,000 inhabitants and 200 painters, a very high number that shows the artistic flowering in Crete. This bloom was unfortunately interrupted violently by the occupation of Heraklion by the Turks in 1669.
Among the most important representative of the Cretan School is Michael Damaskinos. Born around 1535, he studied at Heraklion and spent several years in Venice. Michael Damaskinos seems to have consolidated the rules of the Cretan School. In the church of Saint Catherine there are 6 of his creations.
Other representatives of the Cretan School are Georgios Klontzas and Theophanis Kris.
source: http://www.explorecrete.com/
